Behavioral Cents Blog

It’s fair to say I would never be mistaken for a fashionista. Most of my wardrobe reflects my career in financial services, except when I break out and rebel. This year I bought a fun pair of flowery shoes for spring and summer. While running around New York City one day, 3 different men came up to me and said “I really like your shoes”. No joke. Then 2 more men came up to me another day. This never happens to me. (BTW my shoes were only $70).

If saving money were easy we’d all be doing it. And frankly, about 50% of the Boomer population hasn’t saved much at all. If you wish you were saving more, you belong to a VERY BIG club of like-minded people. That doesn’t mean we should let ourselves off the hook – we do need to plan for the future. But here’s why it’s so very hard.

This is THE YEAR you want to get on top of your cash. GREAT! The worst thing you can do is start with a budget. What? Really? Why? (and secretly, you’re probably thinking Yay!!). Money is not logical. Money is fraught with emotion. And if you force yourself to do something you “should” be doing, you will find some zillion reasons not to do it. Then you’ll feel bad because you “should” be doing it but aren’t, and you’ll start judging yourself, and then feel like a failure. You’ll quit.

In our last two blogs we talked about a Nobel Laureate's proof that we have emotion in all our money decisions, and our ingrained attitudes toward money developed over time. In addition, we also have auto-pilot behaviors. Auto-pilot behaviors are handy because they help you minimize energy needed to get through the day. You probably have at least 50 anchor behaviors a day, such as brushing your teeth, showering, and getting to work. The good news is that most of these can be accomplished without coffee since they are such a routine part of our day. The bad news is that we often don’t realize we’re doing them.

Professor B.J. Fogg has a fun approach to changing habits. He has a program called Tiny Habits, and the concept is a simple way to ease you into new money habits. This blog includes excerpts from an article on B.J. Fogg in Success.com.

B.J. Fogg’s concept of Tiny Habits basically teaches you to break down your BIG Goal into tiny little actions that will build toward the big one. For example, let’s say you’re not great at paying your bills on time, and you incur interest charges because life just gets too busy. So your BIG GOAL would be to pay all bills on time and avoid interest. That’s a tall order. So let’s break it down into Tiny Habits!

In our last blog, we talked about changing subconscious habits instead of using pure willpower to save money. It takes desire and focus to change, but once the new habit is on automatic pilot, it takes less effort than sheer will power.

A habit loop is comprised of a Trigger, Action and Reward. (1) Charles Duhigg, author of a very interesting book called The Power of Habit, provides the following framework for reshaping bad habits. In our last blog we suggested you analyze your morning coffee habit to get a feel for the process. Our example has been placed in Duhigg’s framework: